Becoming One Purple Heart (Formerly Purple Hearts)

Dear Luke

(Luke's Point of View)

About three weeks ago we moved to a new FOB further into enemy territory in the triangle of death. I was unfortunately so wrong back in Ramadi when I thought things couldn't get worse. In fact, I would describe life in South Baghdad as a blood bath and a living nightmare. We just arrived back to our FOB after 72 hours of non stop fighting and it's 16:00 PM here in Baghdad and I am exhausted, thirsty, and starving. I am soaking wet from my own sweat as it's about 118 degrees outside and about 80% humid. I am also covered in dirt, but by far the worst think is that I have the blood of one of my fellow Marine brothers covering my uniform. I have never feared for my own life and the lives of my fellow Marines more than I did about 46 hours ago when mine and several of our squads within our platoon were ambushed while on patrol duty by a group of Iraqi soldiers who apparently changed their alliance. 

Through this war thus far the US and our allies have partnered with the Iraqi Army which we refer to as the coalition forces with have no association with the extremist groups within Iraq. However, over the last few weeks there have been more and more reports of Iraqi coalition forces turning against the American forces and our allies which complicates things and it has unfortunately been happening more and more especially in the triangle of death. We have been trained to view the coalition forces as our allies, but the recent changes in behavior and alliance are making all of us very nervous and they are beginning to plant a seed of doubt in our heads. About 46 hours ago now our entire platoon was out patrolling in our squads, which are smaller teams which have about 6-10 of us which comprise our platoon, when we received intel that we were on a collision course with a handful of enemies however a few small squads within the coalition forces were closer to them and several of our squads who were closest to where the coalition forces were located were told that we were going to need to back them up. 

My squad, along with 3 of our larger squads advanced faster so that we could back up our coalition forces while the other 6 other squads which included Frankie's squad advanced more slowly as they were our backup. As our front squads approached the area with the our coalition forces we began to take heavy fire which we were not expecting and we immediately realized this small squad of coalition forces had turned on us as they are now trying to kill us and our enemy was still fairly close. We quickly began exchanging fire but the difficulty of the landscape here in South Baghdad is there is virtually no cover in some areas as there is a lot of farm land and canals but very few buildings as there are a lot of opium fields out here as that is the popular crop here in Iraq and Afghanistan, so without cover you are essential a sitting duck. On top of that the Iraqi coalition forces have much more knowledge of this land than we do and because this is an IED heavy war this ambush did not allow us time to sweep for potential IEDs. In our front four squads we suffered 3 KIAs and 5 WIAs. In my squad we had 1 WIA which was our Sergeant and and we had a KIA who was our Private First Class as a result of an IED that detonated nearby, which made me the next most senior leader on our team now that I am a Corporal. I quickly ordered my men to return fire while I worked on providing medical treatment to our Sergeant and Private First Class along with another one of the men from my squad. We did everything we possibly could to save both of them but sadly we lost our Private First Class as he became a triple amputee as a result of the IED and though we put tourniquets on his limbs and we use all of the products in our emergency kits to try to get his blood to clot to stop the hemorrhaging but he suffered too much blood loss. After we determined there was nothing more we could do to save him I held his hand and offered as much comfort care as I possibly could until he passed, but right before he passed he told me "please tell my wife Cassidy that I loved her ver much." Hearing those words sent chills throughout my body as it hit so close to home given my wife is named Cassie." We were, however able to save our Sergeant who is likely now in Germany awaiting transport back to a major medical hospital stateside.